A student conservative club at the University of Texas at Austin turned a bake sale into a metaphor for affirmative action.

Members of the Young Conservatives of Texas – UT chapter organized a bake sale on Sept. 25 to protest affirmative action with different prices for different races, The Huffington Post reported on Tuesday.

The chapter charged the following rates, according to a photo of the prices posted to the chapter’s Facebook account on Sept. 25:

• White: $2
• Asian: $1.50
• Latino: $1
• Black: 75 cents
• Native American: 25 cents
• 25 cents off for all women

The University of Texas was involved in the Supreme Court case Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, which challenged the consideration of race in admissions. The Supreme Court sent the decision back to a lower court in June.

The bake sale drew controversy on the group’s Facebook page, as well as on campus. Some, like the university’s student newspaper, criticized the sale while others were more ambivalent.

The bake sale drew mixed emotions from students walking by, Devangi Jajal, a freshman at UT-Austin, said in an email.

“Some students applauded and commended the Young Conservatives, others were disappointed and disgusted by the bake sale,” she said.

A Sept. 26 editorial in The Daily Texan, UT-Austin’s student newspaper, described the bake sale as a “childish stunt.”

George Vincent, the vice president of diversity and community engagement at UT-Austin, also criticized the bake sale in a Sept. 27 statement, calling it a “reductive tactic” to draw attention to the group’s views about affirmative action.

The bake sale “creates the misperception that some students either do not belong at the university or do not deserve to have access to our institution,” he said, or “that they belong or deserve only to a certain degree.”

“The YCT’s approach to this issue also ignores the fact that demographics are just one of many criteria taken into account when applying for admission to UT, a fact that the university has repeatedly and staunchly defended in the Fisher v. UT case,” he wrote in the statement.

The core values in the university’s honor code include freedom, but individual opportunity and responsibility as well, Vincent wrote.

The bake sale was held in a part of campus that is considered an “open forum,” but the sale deflected “negative sentiment” toward their peers, he said.

“In seeking an audience for their ideas, the YCT resorted to exercising one of the university’s core values to the detriment of others,” he said.

Published on October 3, 2013 at 1:47 am

Contact Meghan: mqmistry@syr.edu